Welcome to the first of a series of discussion threads for Matterhorn subscribers. I’m happy to have you here! It is your space as well. Please email me with discussion topics you want to see and take these questions in the directions you like. Or, just come say hi to everyone. :)
Local fictions
I think a lot about how the literature of a particular place both reflects and - at times - defines the cultural identity of a collective group as well as individuals. I find I respond in a different way specifically to the literature of my origins - New England. However, I also find that I understand my experience more in places I have since lived or even traveled to by navigating the local fictions of different shapes.
(Please note that ‘fictions’ here refers to anything that plays with the truth more freely, even non-fiction can contain elements of fiction. Fiction also takes many mediums. Generally, we can interpret it more openly. This is something I discussed on the podcast this season.)
When I was last home (that is, just outside Boston in Lexington, Massachusetts) over the Christmas and New Year holidays this year, I re-read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables. I was struck by his ethereal prose, which felt both other-worldly and modern. Hawthorne also attended the university I went to in Maine, and so his writing has been weaved through my education. The library I studied in was named after him. I have also loved teaching The Scarlet Letterin the past and have considered adding The Blithedale Romanceto a course next year.
Somehow the family home, Puritan society, and town relations spoke to me of my own existence despite few similarities to my experiences other than a grounding in New England. However, I think there is something of an evolution of identity through time in a certain space, in conversation with the natural surroundings, that creates who we are. It doesn’t mean I am like Hawthorne, and hopefully I am unlike the characters! Eek. However, there is the unspoken soul of writing that seems to connect us.
Nevertheless, if we look through all the heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same entanglement of something mean and trivial with whatever is noblest in joy or sorrow. Life is made up of marble and mud. And, without all the deeper trust in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might hence be led to suspect the insult of a sneer, as well as an immitigable frown, on the iron countenance of fate. What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid.
Chapter III
Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive Hepzibah mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama, representing the great thoroughfare of a city all astir with customers. So many and so magnificent shops as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, drygoods stores, with their immense panes of plate-glass, their gorgeous fixtures, their vast and complete assortments of merchandise, in which fortunes had been invested; and those noble mirrors at the farther end of each establishment, doubling all this wealth by a brightly burnished vista of unrealities! On one side of the street this splendid bazaar, with a multitude of perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bowing, and measuring out the goods. On the other, the dusky old House of the Seven Gables, with the antiquated shop-window under its projecting story, and Hepzibah herself, in a gown of rusty black silk, behind the counter, scowling at the world as it went by!
Chapter XII
Holgrave had read very little, and that little in passing through the thoroughfare of life, where the mystic language of his books was necessarily mixed up with the babble of the multitude, so that both one and the other were apt to lose any sense that might have been properly their own. He considered himself a thinker, and was certainly of a thoughtful turn, but, with his own path to discover, had perhaps hardly yet reached the point where an educated man begins to think. The true value of his character lay in that deep consciousness of inward strength, which made all his past vicissitudes seem merely like a change of garments; in that enthusiasm, so quiet that he scarcely knew of its existence, but which gave a warmth to everything that he laid his hand on; in that personal ambition, hidden—from his own as well as other eyes—among his more generous impulses, but in which lurked a certain efficacy, that might solidify him from a theorist into the champion of some practicable cause. Altogether in his culture and want of culture,—in his crude, wild, and misty philosophy, and the practical experience that counteracted some of its tendencies; in his magnanimous zeal for man’s welfare, and his recklessness of whatever the ages had established in man’s behalf; in his faith, and in his infidelity; in what he had, and in what he lacked,—the artist might fitly enough stand forth as the representative of many compeers in his native land.
While at home, I also spent a lot of time listening to Noah Kahan whom my brother introduced me to. (Newsflash: he’s super big and I have been living in some kind of Swiss cave.) Kahan is from New Hampshire and often sings about his home, although it’s not always complimentary. Here’s an excerpt from “Homesick” and a couple other New England themed songs:
I would leave if only I could find a reason I'm mean because I grew up in New England I got dreams, but I can't make myself believe them Spend the rest of my life with what could've been And I will die in the house that I grew up in
Paul Revere’s ride climaxed just 600 meters from my parents’ house in Lexington. Like the elements of Hawthorn’s tales, Revere’s biography has little to do with me, but those stories you hear as a child shape you somehow and also create a common cultural point of relation. You can also read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem on the subject here. For other New England writers I enjoy, you can visit a couple of posts I did last year on Massachusetts, linked at the bottom. (i.e. Wharton, Melville, Dickinson)
Personally, I often write of New England as an elsewhere in my fiction rather than the main setting. However, I’m currently writing a novel based in Maine, inspired partly by Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. I’ve also had an idea for something that takes place in Thoreau’s Concord - a town with many layers of history, writer residents, and quirks like banning plastic bottles independently of the state/country.
And related to education and curriculum, I’m constantly navigating a local/global space of literary understanding for students as well as including examples of indigenous literature. It’s hard to do it all, but I find it rewarding to focus on both of these areas in an English curriculum and is something I’ve worked on for a long time.
In international schools I’ve worked at in the past, this is especially multi-dimensional when we consider the location of study, the students’ home literatures, and world literature. However, I think if we structure this understanding the right way it becomes a powerful way of understanding the world rather than an overwhelming force.
And now, the questions to guide our discussion. Feel free to go on tangents!
What fictions of home help you to understand yourself? Home might be where you’re from or where you currently reside (or both).
To what extent should we study local — or more specifically indigenous — literature in schools? I realize this question can go in several directions, especially when separating local more broadly from indigenous. Answer in whichever direction interests you. That is, either about these tensions (local/indigenous) or as an and/both.
How does local literature (or film, etc.) reflect and create (your) local culture?
What examples of your own work relate to the idea of a home place or local culture in some way?
Thanks for thinking about these ideas and look forward to your thoughts!
What an interesting discussion. Home can be something to celebrate and revel in culturally, or to rebel against. Thanks for introducing me to Noah Kahan: I enjoyed "Homesick" but I don't think that the New England tourist board will be calling on his services! 😄It's a common syndrome - David Bowie and many other artists have, for example, found a suburban background to be sterile and a place to escape, yet suburbia has produced some fantastic artists. Whatever gives you creative fuel, be it a love of home or the opposite, use it!
When travelling in the UK I have been known to read a book that fits my destination, eg before I took a break in Fleet, Dorset on the south coast I reread "Moonfleet" by J Meade Falkner, just to get me in the mood. We were staying near Chesil beach and I had recently read "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan, so this combined the literary with the geographical even more. This happens in London more than anywhere, since it is definitely the place about which I have read the most both in fiction and in non-fiction. If you read about a place before you go there your impressions must surely be influenced by having read about it.
Funny enough, we just might move to the general vicinity of David Bowie's starting ground. It's probably changed a bit since then, but it's funny to me how much the different parts of London are seen as completely separate places (and even as suburbs). I love that there is literature connected to not just the country or city, but the particular STREET even.
Great recs here as well, thank you! Happy to have introduced you to another musician.
Great thread and discussions, Kate. Stimulating as always.
Never heard of Kahan, so I've been in that cave too!
Having moved around and lived in Australia for many years, I feel a disconnect with what home means now, which is kinda sad when I think about it. Plus, I read mostly fiction that isn't set on this earth, so I haven't ever sought out books set in anywhere I directly relate to.
However: in my early 20s I devoured everything HP Lovecraft ever wrote (along with much King), and so have a strange connection with New England and would love to visit in order to see the architecture Lovecraft so vividly described.
Of Aussie literature that has a defined place, I've only really read Trent Dalton's All Our Shimmering Skies (mostly enjoyed it; I'm not the ravenous fan that a lot of people here are. He's got talent, though. It has one of the best opening paragraphs I can remember from a book). Of the UK, I think the most specific thing I can think of that gave me UK home vibes is David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks (a disappointing read, considering how much I adore his other work).
I think film has a bigger defining place in this space for me. We watch a lot of Aussie cinema (generally indies) and they have such a specific feel. Same goes for some UK productions.
New England is a wonderful place to visit! I highly recommend it, even with its distance from Australia.
I can see how film would do this even more. I mean, the location is always in the frame (even if its recreated). So you can't ignore it.
Interesting also that you are reading a lot of fiction 'not on Earth.' Perhaps by living in different places, you've also been able to imagine what an elsewhere that doesn't exist might look like? We can feel so comfortable in our homes that we forget to consider there are so many possibilities (even on Earth).
Thanks for the great reflection, Nathan. Do let me know if you like Kahan. He can help you get ready for your New England trip!
I think I've always defaulted to wanting to read of the fantastical and mysterious and otherworldly. Not sure quite why that is. Perhaps a desire to try and see things in my mind that are truly foreign (even though much of earth remains foreign to me haha).
A great question and a fascinating reflection on the topic from you, Kate. In a sense, this question is one which haunts my English Republic of Letters. In terms of my origins in Devon, I think of the fresh descriptions of nature in Lorna Doone or Tarka the Otter, both local fictions, as summing up one aspect of my upbringing in the countryside. If I take a country I have lived in, I guess Orhan Pamuk was a guide to Turkey for me. I think I experienced things about the country (especially Istanbul) through his novels that I simply couldn't have accessed in other ways, as an outsider. Another instructive experience for me was in Cairo, contrasting the local (yet universal) brilliance of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy with the decidedly orientalist (not to mention casually racist) Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning. The former grounded me, and the latter alienated me from my surroundings.
Oh yes, I'm sure you have a lot to say about this topic, and you do say something about it almost every week in your publication. I love the work of Mahfouz and Pamuk but have never been to Turkey and only to the touristic coast of Egypt. I do imagine the places through the lenses of these authors. I guess it is a way to become an insider, isn't it? It's one perspective, but it's a way to understand at least some locals even before landing in a place. You've lived in such a variety of interesting places. Thanks for the comments, Jeffrey!
Interesting thoughts and ideas on connections with home and literature, Kate! I feel like I have a bit of a complex relationship with this: I am not a traveller (though I have been to other countries, just not a lot), and love being home. And yet...I don't tend to read a lot of literature or watch films based around where I'm from. In fact (shameful confession) I often find stories set in my home city a bit awkward and tend to avoid them! I prefer reading fiction set in other places, particularly cities, usually in the US or London, or in coastal places. I have no idea if this says something specific about me or my reading tastes! However, I am currently thinking of writing a newsletter about something connected to my home town and have an idea for a novel which has been with me for over a decade and would be set around where I'm from. But I feel a resistance...
The exception to all this of course is my appreciation for the Bronte's, particularly Wuthering Heights, which could only be set in Yorkshire! Oh, and the music of the Arctic Monkeys, who are from just down the road and their lyrics are very much tied to the people and places where I live!
This idea about your home literature is so interesting and makes me think that YOUR writing about it would be truly compelling as an anti-narrative or counter-story to some degree. INtrigued! I do love the Arctic Monkeys and had no idea where they were from nor have I paid much attention to their lyrics. I shall now do so!
Thanks a lot for the reflection, Kate, especially on your home.
Home - ugh. I've given this some thought over the years, and it's such a complicated subject, especially for someone who moved around a lot as a child. California? Yes, but not the Cali of the movies - sunshine, palm trees, and Venice Beach - more like the cookie cutter subdivisions of stucco homes, and endless driving in cars. Food? Do Eggo Waffles and Lucky Charms count? 🤣 I feel like my writing is an endless attempt to find the particular in what can appear endless variations of beige.
Those were our food staples on the annual Maine lake holiday! :)
Call me crazy, but endless variations of beige sounds interesting to me. I'm so fascinated more by everyday life and the little spaces - alleys, kitchens, spots under a particular tree - more than the iconic ones. But then I feel like both are at play with one another.
However, one can successfully write a book in a nondescript place. I think this takes a different kind of skill because you really have to strip things down to the essentials and barebones in terms of personalities and how these characters move and act through the space.
Not sure where I'm going with that, but I like the concept even if a child there might pine for elsewhere. Is that true? Or is there a safety/comfort in the beige?
I suppose if there is love and comfort between people, beige can be interesting in its many gradations - all you need is love, right? I agree with you about the everyday vs. iconic, the man on the street vs. our celebrity culture - and you're right, I think we could probably do with a lot more celebration of the ordinary. But beige has its dangers too, particularly when a splash of color is introduced where it is strange and "unnatural"... ;)
This is such an interesting topic to explore, Kathleen! I feel in many ways localized texts have helped me adjust to new cities after each of the many moves I've made in life: reading Baldwin’s novels while living in New York, taking in Jarman films on the tiny telly in my London bedsit, and most recently diving into Sinclair Lewis’s novels after moving to Minnesota. (Now that I'm here, Prince and Dylan’s music have also taken on new layers of meaning.)
On the other side of the coin, so much of my work also revolves around getting to know the local culture in cities I’ve yet to discover in person — capitals for classical music like Vienna, Leipzig, and Paris. Sometimes I forget that I haven't yet walked their cobble-stoned streets because my visions of them through the arts born in and inspired by those locales are so vivid and varied.
And of course, being from New England, I also feel deep resonance with the arts of our home region, which you've articulated so brilliantly in your discussion of Hawthorne!
You bring up so many wonderful examples, Michael. And with our similar background - when you consider Minnesota as well - I can see how that comes up at times. It's interesting also to think about place when considering music and the way it shapes the sounds in addition to the lyrics.
MN - I think a lot of people's understanding of it (and North Dakota) come from Fargo (both the film and series), much like DB mentions about Breaking Bad and New Mexico. And perhaps everything on TV in the wake of George Floyd's murder.
A writer I love who is also part of the indigenous voice of MN is Louise Erdrich.
I'm rereading Lucia Berlin's collection of short stories Evening in Paradise. She remains one of my most amazing literary discoveries: someone who describes New Mexico as I perceive and feel it, but who also has lived in New York and connects the two in a way that's fundamentally rare and I know of no other example in literature. Another spark of recognition her work holds for me is being literary minded as both a writer and a reader, but the stories often deal with lower class and very often with drunk and lower educated people, much like the community I grew up in.
Now, in New Mexico it's very common for people to be enthusiastic about authors like Tony Hillerman or Rudolfo Anaya. (I've read both authors and 10/10, can recommend, but neither of them hit the same way Berlin does for me.) I use them more as examples of how New Mexico is framed in literature, or really how literary people expect New Mexico to be framed.
For Tony Hillerman, it's using the landscape and the people as a backdrop to a familiar genre: character, color, style to add to mystery books. I mean don't get me wrong, Hillerman gets it right and deeply knows the history and community (I actually probably should have chosen a lesser writer), but it's still like when I see Architectural Digest photos of "Southwest style" interior decorating and it's all angular afghan blankets in oranges and ochre and turquoise-studded tintype frames.
Rudolfo Anaya's literature is true to his multigenerational Chicano community. But that's not quite the community I grew up with. The difference, for you I guess, between Hawthorne as Massachusetts culture and the Boston Irish diaspora. Not sure if that's quite an accurate analogy but a little of where I'm pointing.
Hillerman and Anaya aren't the only ones but I use them as representation of the expectations of New Mexican literature: that it's either written by white people with 'Southwest style' or that it's serious literature but about non-white people. Berlin actually describes the mixed, amalgamate community.
And one last note that most New Mexican writers published widely are sci-fi / fantasy writers like George R.R. Martin. So, New Mexico doesn't apply to how to read their literature.
Wanted also to mention Breaking Bad. One of my jokes about Breaking Bad is that it's terribly misrepresentative of Albuquerque: they're all addicted to heroin, not meth! But one thing I will say about that show and Better Call Saul is that the location scouting is just stellar. Absolutely outstanding location scouting. Everywhere they choose to show a thing happening is more or less the sort of place where those sorts of things would happen -- to a degree of course. It's not like the streets are filled with exploding cars at gas stations and laundromat-covered meth labs. But WHERE those things happen is where those things would happen if they happened. One of my favorite locations actually is Jesse's duplex apartment with Jane. That is SUCH a fucking Albuquerque relationship, from the landlord tenant dynamics to the little adobe casita structure. So good.
Another joke I have about Breaking Bad: I used to travel all over the United States including to the East Coast and everywhere I'd go, I'd get statements like, "You're from New Mexico? But you're white," or "You speak good English" or "Do you need a passport to travel to the US?" These days I tell people that and they are all like "Nah I always knew New Mexico was a state" but no, they fucking didn't. I was there, I received these statements, I know. Even to this day many people remember I'm vaguely from the Southwest and so jump to Arizona. My uncle-in-law finally got it right after seven whole years.
But anyway, all of the "New Mexico is actually a state" conversation ended with Breaking Bad. Which raises the question of whether that's actually a good thing: because shouldn't it be better to be mistaken as a Mexican than be mistaken as a meth dealer?
What a great Breaking Bad riff. I watched the whole thing - enjoyable television - as well as some of Better Call Saul. And I can see what you mean on many different levels. My best friend in college was from New Mexico, but was Korean American, so I had a different lens of understanding I guess. Never been though! Must remedy that.
Relatedly, you also bring up an interesting point about white/non-white New Mexico, and I wonder if you also mean indigenous or more from a generally racial perspective?
Chicano culture has such rich literature and artistry - including music for sure. It's an interesting one to bring up here because it's also often at odds or in a 'minor' kind of way in terms of its tension with the 'majority' culture.
I haven't read any of your literary mentions so can't comment. I can put them on my reading list. I do like the way you talk about the way Berlin 'hits' for you despite the superstar rating you give the others. I think sometimes we have this kind of affinity with a way of seeing the world, often rooted in place. With some writers, I think we share a kind of consciousness.
Thanks so much for this incredibly detailed and dynamic response, DB. I've learned a lot.
> I wonder if you also mean indigenous or more from a generally racial perspective?
So, yes and no. From the American Indian perspective, New Mexico has a ton of its geography dedicated to various tribes' reservations, but as Sherman Alexie pointed out in a semi-recent post, like a couple months ago or something, there are "Res Indians" and there are "City Indians." I actually had very, extremely little contact with reservations despite living their for over 25 years. The same is true, I believe, of many people. Most of the Native Americans I know not only don't live on the res, but neither did their parents and in some cases neither did their grandparents. They all have family there though.
But there's another type of 'indigenousness' in New Mexico in terms of both Hispano and Chicano cultures. And there it gets complicated because there are both Mexican-Americans, in the sense of immigrants and children of immigrants, and then there are people whose families have lived in New Mexico since before the United States was founded. This latter group of predominantly Hispano but some Chicano families are somewhat dynastic. Literally the current governor of New Mexico hails from two of those dynasties: Governor Lujan-Grisham, the Luhans and the Grishams. Old Town Albuquerque has all these weirdly Victorian era looking lampposts that are tagged by many of these old-school New Mexican family names.
Of course those families don't represent the entire culture, but mix that sort of "We've been here since 1550" with new Mexican immigrants and you get a lot of variety of different ethnic and cultural groups that nevertheless look to non New Mexicans and white people like "Latinos." Some of them really hate being called Latinos, some of them embrace it. Some are white Hispanics and are right wing about their whiteness. It's ecclectic. For reference that 'pulling down statues' debate often associated with Southern Confederates and Christopher Columbus had its New Mexican equivalent in Hernán Cortés statues, including one altercation that resulted in a friend of mine getting shot in the leg.
Another major group in Albuquerque specifically are Vietnamese-Americans, because Albuquerque hosts Kirkland Airforce Base which was a major feeder of pilots to airforce bases in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
And a lot of white Americans migrate to New Mexico through the Airforce and the National Labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, White Sands, and to some degree the Spaceport). This creates something of a class divide as New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the nation but the scientists and researchers make six figures or more. This also results in something of a parallel economy and infrastructure. The public schools in Albuquerque are some of the worst rated in the nation, but I graduated from that same system with a great education. The difference between regular, AP, and remedial education systems are significant, between schools but sometimes even within the same school. And, sadly, by the time I was in high school I noticed I lost most of my Chicano friends from elementary school to drop-outs and gangs.
And so that's why I relate to Lucia Berlin's experiences of New Mexico: I grew up around the New Mexican poor but was educated and supported by the New Mexican rich. Both groups had a huge amount of Hispanics but some were white Hispanic, some were Latino, and some were Chicano, depending on their own family history and some amount of how they preferred to think about it. And everything was imbued with Native American, particularly Dine character and vibes despite the fact I knew only a couple dozen Dine people.
Another really interesting reflection, DB. I've learned a lot more.
It sounds like there is a lot of nuance in the varieties of peoples and cultures inhabiting New Mexico that make it ripe for art and literature. When you add socioeconomics to it, it's even more complex. Sounds like you have inhabited several of these social/cultural spaces and also seen the sad consequences of an education systems' failings. I really do think so many things could be helped, if not completely solved, with better education (ie more money in education...).
Interesting and inspiring. I will do anything to avoid writing directly about 'home', because it is too painful and overwhelming to write about. Home, for me, I think, seeps through my subconscious and trickles into my texts in unexpected ways. One pattern is home destroyed and recreated, which certainly mirrors personal experience. My present writing challenge involves the symbolism of place in historical fiction. I will have to think some more about this.
What a gorgeous answer, Annette. How interesting to look at your own work in this way. We might consider the work of other authors through that lens.
You've now made me consider if this is why I have avoided a 'home' novel. I think it's complex, but maybe the pains of childhood (even when childhood is also wonderful) could have this effect. Lots to think about!
Yes. Our work takes on curious, unexpected meanings when we look at it from outside. I think that is when it is most revelatory as far as deeply personal insight is concerned. I think that we tend to write through layers of knowledge, and that reading our own work is a way of peeling back the layers to perceive the core of ourselves in the unwritten themes, the less deliberate characters, the curious subplot that happen to make their way into the text, and which are often the more powerful or evocative.
Noah Kahan is amazing! He's actually from my home state of Vermont but went to school across the state line in New Hampshire. There's an extensive article about him right now in our local newspaper, Seven Days, that you might want to check out.
Enjoyed the variety here. I think you provide the best answer yourself at the end: "However, I think if we structure this understanding the right way it becomes a powerful way of understanding the world rather than an overwhelming force."
To be as fully cognizant of and conversant with their experience of the world, people need to know the local cultures that produced them, even if it's in reaction to it. By this point in civilizational development and global connection, people need exposure to the different cultures that intersect, or seemingly don't, their own.
Great comment, Jay. Yes I think it’s about also this meeting among the various local cultures in literature. How they interact gives us even more meaning and let’s us find commonalities as well. Thanks for joining the discussion.
"However, there is the unspoken soul of writing that seems to connect us." This holds esp. true the more pre/text is shared between readers/writers, which brings me to intertextuality and in consequence prototype semantics and the ongoing debate around classification and meaning. As for local fiction, if we're talking hometown, I am drawing a blank, although, Bavaria has some fine writers. Michael Ende is one and in earlier periods, I would name Brecht and Mann, both are/were taught in schools, at least in my case, probably still today, but most of my pre-university reading was filled with SF/F/Horror writers from the UK/US, so "home" for me was always fleeting, and still is.
I think it's important for education to break the DWEM literature canon and include "local" literature, read broadly! As far as my writing is concerned, my main influence comes from all the SF/F and Classics, from Adams to Zelazny.
PS. Noah Khan is great! Reminds me a lot of Richard Ashcroft (Human Condition esp.)
Most of my pre-college choice reading was also decidedly non-local and often in strange worlds. But we looked at a lot of local in school, and then I was more interested in college and later to investigate myself.
Interesting your trajectory! I wonder as a non-native Parisian if you have embraced local literature there at all?
In any case, this idea of home as fleeting, yes I absolutely relate. Maybe this is why, paradoxically, I'm even more interested in localized writing and how it captures a space/culture. We can inhabit that artistic experience in some way.
Thanks for your wonderful comments as always, Alexander!
I came to France in 2004 without speaking a single word, well OK, I knew one or two, so any French literature up to that point was either in translation (German or English) and I only recently started to read in French, Camus, and to my surprise, War and Peace, which has a lot of French!
Thank you for an interesting post, Kathleen. I like the idea of reading literature connected with places in order to make our visits all the more rewarding. It's the sort of 'home'work I enjoy! Prior to my career as a writer I spent over a decade as an interior design consultant working with domestic residential clients. 'Home' has, therefore, always been a pre-occupation, but specifically it's been about the physical spaces in which we live and how they impact our everyday life. Since I switched my focus to writing about home and place, my concept of home has broadened much further to include the emotional as well as the physical landscapes we inhabit.
Yasmin, thanks for this very interesting reflection. I am incredibly interested with home interiors and their reflections of both the individual and the local culture. I didn't realize you worked in this area and know of at least three active community members here who have worked in interior design in some capacity. There is so much to be said about this topic but I love the way you talk about the emotional elements and physical landscapes as well. Thank you!
What an interesting discussion. Home can be something to celebrate and revel in culturally, or to rebel against. Thanks for introducing me to Noah Kahan: I enjoyed "Homesick" but I don't think that the New England tourist board will be calling on his services! 😄It's a common syndrome - David Bowie and many other artists have, for example, found a suburban background to be sterile and a place to escape, yet suburbia has produced some fantastic artists. Whatever gives you creative fuel, be it a love of home or the opposite, use it!
When travelling in the UK I have been known to read a book that fits my destination, eg before I took a break in Fleet, Dorset on the south coast I reread "Moonfleet" by J Meade Falkner, just to get me in the mood. We were staying near Chesil beach and I had recently read "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan, so this combined the literary with the geographical even more. This happens in London more than anywhere, since it is definitely the place about which I have read the most both in fiction and in non-fiction. If you read about a place before you go there your impressions must surely be influenced by having read about it.
I enjoyed this Kate - thank you!
Thanks for the comments, Julia!
Funny enough, we just might move to the general vicinity of David Bowie's starting ground. It's probably changed a bit since then, but it's funny to me how much the different parts of London are seen as completely separate places (and even as suburbs). I love that there is literature connected to not just the country or city, but the particular STREET even.
Great recs here as well, thank you! Happy to have introduced you to another musician.
Great thread and discussions, Kate. Stimulating as always.
Never heard of Kahan, so I've been in that cave too!
Having moved around and lived in Australia for many years, I feel a disconnect with what home means now, which is kinda sad when I think about it. Plus, I read mostly fiction that isn't set on this earth, so I haven't ever sought out books set in anywhere I directly relate to.
However: in my early 20s I devoured everything HP Lovecraft ever wrote (along with much King), and so have a strange connection with New England and would love to visit in order to see the architecture Lovecraft so vividly described.
Of Aussie literature that has a defined place, I've only really read Trent Dalton's All Our Shimmering Skies (mostly enjoyed it; I'm not the ravenous fan that a lot of people here are. He's got talent, though. It has one of the best opening paragraphs I can remember from a book). Of the UK, I think the most specific thing I can think of that gave me UK home vibes is David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks (a disappointing read, considering how much I adore his other work).
I think film has a bigger defining place in this space for me. We watch a lot of Aussie cinema (generally indies) and they have such a specific feel. Same goes for some UK productions.
New England is a wonderful place to visit! I highly recommend it, even with its distance from Australia.
I can see how film would do this even more. I mean, the location is always in the frame (even if its recreated). So you can't ignore it.
Interesting also that you are reading a lot of fiction 'not on Earth.' Perhaps by living in different places, you've also been able to imagine what an elsewhere that doesn't exist might look like? We can feel so comfortable in our homes that we forget to consider there are so many possibilities (even on Earth).
Thanks for the great reflection, Nathan. Do let me know if you like Kahan. He can help you get ready for your New England trip!
☺️
Thanks Kate.
I think I've always defaulted to wanting to read of the fantastical and mysterious and otherworldly. Not sure quite why that is. Perhaps a desire to try and see things in my mind that are truly foreign (even though much of earth remains foreign to me haha).
A great question and a fascinating reflection on the topic from you, Kate. In a sense, this question is one which haunts my English Republic of Letters. In terms of my origins in Devon, I think of the fresh descriptions of nature in Lorna Doone or Tarka the Otter, both local fictions, as summing up one aspect of my upbringing in the countryside. If I take a country I have lived in, I guess Orhan Pamuk was a guide to Turkey for me. I think I experienced things about the country (especially Istanbul) through his novels that I simply couldn't have accessed in other ways, as an outsider. Another instructive experience for me was in Cairo, contrasting the local (yet universal) brilliance of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy with the decidedly orientalist (not to mention casually racist) Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning. The former grounded me, and the latter alienated me from my surroundings.
Oh yes, I'm sure you have a lot to say about this topic, and you do say something about it almost every week in your publication. I love the work of Mahfouz and Pamuk but have never been to Turkey and only to the touristic coast of Egypt. I do imagine the places through the lenses of these authors. I guess it is a way to become an insider, isn't it? It's one perspective, but it's a way to understand at least some locals even before landing in a place. You've lived in such a variety of interesting places. Thanks for the comments, Jeffrey!
Interesting thoughts and ideas on connections with home and literature, Kate! I feel like I have a bit of a complex relationship with this: I am not a traveller (though I have been to other countries, just not a lot), and love being home. And yet...I don't tend to read a lot of literature or watch films based around where I'm from. In fact (shameful confession) I often find stories set in my home city a bit awkward and tend to avoid them! I prefer reading fiction set in other places, particularly cities, usually in the US or London, or in coastal places. I have no idea if this says something specific about me or my reading tastes! However, I am currently thinking of writing a newsletter about something connected to my home town and have an idea for a novel which has been with me for over a decade and would be set around where I'm from. But I feel a resistance...
The exception to all this of course is my appreciation for the Bronte's, particularly Wuthering Heights, which could only be set in Yorkshire! Oh, and the music of the Arctic Monkeys, who are from just down the road and their lyrics are very much tied to the people and places where I live!
This idea about your home literature is so interesting and makes me think that YOUR writing about it would be truly compelling as an anti-narrative or counter-story to some degree. INtrigued! I do love the Arctic Monkeys and had no idea where they were from nor have I paid much attention to their lyrics. I shall now do so!
Thanks a lot for the reflection, Kate, especially on your home.
Ha thanks, Kate 😀
Home - ugh. I've given this some thought over the years, and it's such a complicated subject, especially for someone who moved around a lot as a child. California? Yes, but not the Cali of the movies - sunshine, palm trees, and Venice Beach - more like the cookie cutter subdivisions of stucco homes, and endless driving in cars. Food? Do Eggo Waffles and Lucky Charms count? 🤣 I feel like my writing is an endless attempt to find the particular in what can appear endless variations of beige.
Those were our food staples on the annual Maine lake holiday! :)
Call me crazy, but endless variations of beige sounds interesting to me. I'm so fascinated more by everyday life and the little spaces - alleys, kitchens, spots under a particular tree - more than the iconic ones. But then I feel like both are at play with one another.
However, one can successfully write a book in a nondescript place. I think this takes a different kind of skill because you really have to strip things down to the essentials and barebones in terms of personalities and how these characters move and act through the space.
Not sure where I'm going with that, but I like the concept even if a child there might pine for elsewhere. Is that true? Or is there a safety/comfort in the beige?
I suppose if there is love and comfort between people, beige can be interesting in its many gradations - all you need is love, right? I agree with you about the everyday vs. iconic, the man on the street vs. our celebrity culture - and you're right, I think we could probably do with a lot more celebration of the ordinary. But beige has its dangers too, particularly when a splash of color is introduced where it is strange and "unnatural"... ;)
Ah, Edward Scissorhands.
No doubt many back in beige-ville are pining after their lost rainbows that drifted away to Spain. Or they don't even realize what they've lost. :)
I love that "Lost Rainbows" - there's a title... ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
This is such an interesting topic to explore, Kathleen! I feel in many ways localized texts have helped me adjust to new cities after each of the many moves I've made in life: reading Baldwin’s novels while living in New York, taking in Jarman films on the tiny telly in my London bedsit, and most recently diving into Sinclair Lewis’s novels after moving to Minnesota. (Now that I'm here, Prince and Dylan’s music have also taken on new layers of meaning.)
On the other side of the coin, so much of my work also revolves around getting to know the local culture in cities I’ve yet to discover in person — capitals for classical music like Vienna, Leipzig, and Paris. Sometimes I forget that I haven't yet walked their cobble-stoned streets because my visions of them through the arts born in and inspired by those locales are so vivid and varied.
And of course, being from New England, I also feel deep resonance with the arts of our home region, which you've articulated so brilliantly in your discussion of Hawthorne!
You bring up so many wonderful examples, Michael. And with our similar background - when you consider Minnesota as well - I can see how that comes up at times. It's interesting also to think about place when considering music and the way it shapes the sounds in addition to the lyrics.
MN - I think a lot of people's understanding of it (and North Dakota) come from Fargo (both the film and series), much like DB mentions about Breaking Bad and New Mexico. And perhaps everything on TV in the wake of George Floyd's murder.
A writer I love who is also part of the indigenous voice of MN is Louise Erdrich.
Thanks for this lovely comment!
I'll be sure to check out Erdrich’s work! Thanks for the rec.
I'm rereading Lucia Berlin's collection of short stories Evening in Paradise. She remains one of my most amazing literary discoveries: someone who describes New Mexico as I perceive and feel it, but who also has lived in New York and connects the two in a way that's fundamentally rare and I know of no other example in literature. Another spark of recognition her work holds for me is being literary minded as both a writer and a reader, but the stories often deal with lower class and very often with drunk and lower educated people, much like the community I grew up in.
Now, in New Mexico it's very common for people to be enthusiastic about authors like Tony Hillerman or Rudolfo Anaya. (I've read both authors and 10/10, can recommend, but neither of them hit the same way Berlin does for me.) I use them more as examples of how New Mexico is framed in literature, or really how literary people expect New Mexico to be framed.
For Tony Hillerman, it's using the landscape and the people as a backdrop to a familiar genre: character, color, style to add to mystery books. I mean don't get me wrong, Hillerman gets it right and deeply knows the history and community (I actually probably should have chosen a lesser writer), but it's still like when I see Architectural Digest photos of "Southwest style" interior decorating and it's all angular afghan blankets in oranges and ochre and turquoise-studded tintype frames.
Rudolfo Anaya's literature is true to his multigenerational Chicano community. But that's not quite the community I grew up with. The difference, for you I guess, between Hawthorne as Massachusetts culture and the Boston Irish diaspora. Not sure if that's quite an accurate analogy but a little of where I'm pointing.
Hillerman and Anaya aren't the only ones but I use them as representation of the expectations of New Mexican literature: that it's either written by white people with 'Southwest style' or that it's serious literature but about non-white people. Berlin actually describes the mixed, amalgamate community.
And one last note that most New Mexican writers published widely are sci-fi / fantasy writers like George R.R. Martin. So, New Mexico doesn't apply to how to read their literature.
Wanted also to mention Breaking Bad. One of my jokes about Breaking Bad is that it's terribly misrepresentative of Albuquerque: they're all addicted to heroin, not meth! But one thing I will say about that show and Better Call Saul is that the location scouting is just stellar. Absolutely outstanding location scouting. Everywhere they choose to show a thing happening is more or less the sort of place where those sorts of things would happen -- to a degree of course. It's not like the streets are filled with exploding cars at gas stations and laundromat-covered meth labs. But WHERE those things happen is where those things would happen if they happened. One of my favorite locations actually is Jesse's duplex apartment with Jane. That is SUCH a fucking Albuquerque relationship, from the landlord tenant dynamics to the little adobe casita structure. So good.
Another joke I have about Breaking Bad: I used to travel all over the United States including to the East Coast and everywhere I'd go, I'd get statements like, "You're from New Mexico? But you're white," or "You speak good English" or "Do you need a passport to travel to the US?" These days I tell people that and they are all like "Nah I always knew New Mexico was a state" but no, they fucking didn't. I was there, I received these statements, I know. Even to this day many people remember I'm vaguely from the Southwest and so jump to Arizona. My uncle-in-law finally got it right after seven whole years.
But anyway, all of the "New Mexico is actually a state" conversation ended with Breaking Bad. Which raises the question of whether that's actually a good thing: because shouldn't it be better to be mistaken as a Mexican than be mistaken as a meth dealer?
Bu-dum kish.
What a great Breaking Bad riff. I watched the whole thing - enjoyable television - as well as some of Better Call Saul. And I can see what you mean on many different levels. My best friend in college was from New Mexico, but was Korean American, so I had a different lens of understanding I guess. Never been though! Must remedy that.
Relatedly, you also bring up an interesting point about white/non-white New Mexico, and I wonder if you also mean indigenous or more from a generally racial perspective?
Chicano culture has such rich literature and artistry - including music for sure. It's an interesting one to bring up here because it's also often at odds or in a 'minor' kind of way in terms of its tension with the 'majority' culture.
I haven't read any of your literary mentions so can't comment. I can put them on my reading list. I do like the way you talk about the way Berlin 'hits' for you despite the superstar rating you give the others. I think sometimes we have this kind of affinity with a way of seeing the world, often rooted in place. With some writers, I think we share a kind of consciousness.
Thanks so much for this incredibly detailed and dynamic response, DB. I've learned a lot.
> I wonder if you also mean indigenous or more from a generally racial perspective?
So, yes and no. From the American Indian perspective, New Mexico has a ton of its geography dedicated to various tribes' reservations, but as Sherman Alexie pointed out in a semi-recent post, like a couple months ago or something, there are "Res Indians" and there are "City Indians." I actually had very, extremely little contact with reservations despite living their for over 25 years. The same is true, I believe, of many people. Most of the Native Americans I know not only don't live on the res, but neither did their parents and in some cases neither did their grandparents. They all have family there though.
But there's another type of 'indigenousness' in New Mexico in terms of both Hispano and Chicano cultures. And there it gets complicated because there are both Mexican-Americans, in the sense of immigrants and children of immigrants, and then there are people whose families have lived in New Mexico since before the United States was founded. This latter group of predominantly Hispano but some Chicano families are somewhat dynastic. Literally the current governor of New Mexico hails from two of those dynasties: Governor Lujan-Grisham, the Luhans and the Grishams. Old Town Albuquerque has all these weirdly Victorian era looking lampposts that are tagged by many of these old-school New Mexican family names.
Of course those families don't represent the entire culture, but mix that sort of "We've been here since 1550" with new Mexican immigrants and you get a lot of variety of different ethnic and cultural groups that nevertheless look to non New Mexicans and white people like "Latinos." Some of them really hate being called Latinos, some of them embrace it. Some are white Hispanics and are right wing about their whiteness. It's ecclectic. For reference that 'pulling down statues' debate often associated with Southern Confederates and Christopher Columbus had its New Mexican equivalent in Hernán Cortés statues, including one altercation that resulted in a friend of mine getting shot in the leg.
Another major group in Albuquerque specifically are Vietnamese-Americans, because Albuquerque hosts Kirkland Airforce Base which was a major feeder of pilots to airforce bases in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
And a lot of white Americans migrate to New Mexico through the Airforce and the National Labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, White Sands, and to some degree the Spaceport). This creates something of a class divide as New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the nation but the scientists and researchers make six figures or more. This also results in something of a parallel economy and infrastructure. The public schools in Albuquerque are some of the worst rated in the nation, but I graduated from that same system with a great education. The difference between regular, AP, and remedial education systems are significant, between schools but sometimes even within the same school. And, sadly, by the time I was in high school I noticed I lost most of my Chicano friends from elementary school to drop-outs and gangs.
And so that's why I relate to Lucia Berlin's experiences of New Mexico: I grew up around the New Mexican poor but was educated and supported by the New Mexican rich. Both groups had a huge amount of Hispanics but some were white Hispanic, some were Latino, and some were Chicano, depending on their own family history and some amount of how they preferred to think about it. And everything was imbued with Native American, particularly Dine character and vibes despite the fact I knew only a couple dozen Dine people.
Another really interesting reflection, DB. I've learned a lot more.
It sounds like there is a lot of nuance in the varieties of peoples and cultures inhabiting New Mexico that make it ripe for art and literature. When you add socioeconomics to it, it's even more complex. Sounds like you have inhabited several of these social/cultural spaces and also seen the sad consequences of an education systems' failings. I really do think so many things could be helped, if not completely solved, with better education (ie more money in education...).
Thanks again.
Interesting and inspiring. I will do anything to avoid writing directly about 'home', because it is too painful and overwhelming to write about. Home, for me, I think, seeps through my subconscious and trickles into my texts in unexpected ways. One pattern is home destroyed and recreated, which certainly mirrors personal experience. My present writing challenge involves the symbolism of place in historical fiction. I will have to think some more about this.
What a gorgeous answer, Annette. How interesting to look at your own work in this way. We might consider the work of other authors through that lens.
You've now made me consider if this is why I have avoided a 'home' novel. I think it's complex, but maybe the pains of childhood (even when childhood is also wonderful) could have this effect. Lots to think about!
Yes. Our work takes on curious, unexpected meanings when we look at it from outside. I think that is when it is most revelatory as far as deeply personal insight is concerned. I think that we tend to write through layers of knowledge, and that reading our own work is a way of peeling back the layers to perceive the core of ourselves in the unwritten themes, the less deliberate characters, the curious subplot that happen to make their way into the text, and which are often the more powerful or evocative.
Noah Kahan is amazing! He's actually from my home state of Vermont but went to school across the state line in New Hampshire. There's an extensive article about him right now in our local newspaper, Seven Days, that you might want to check out.
Oh! Thanks for the update. I'm not sure where I got that info before...
I love Vermont. Lucky you! Thanks for the comment and I'll look for the article.
Enjoyed the variety here. I think you provide the best answer yourself at the end: "However, I think if we structure this understanding the right way it becomes a powerful way of understanding the world rather than an overwhelming force."
To be as fully cognizant of and conversant with their experience of the world, people need to know the local cultures that produced them, even if it's in reaction to it. By this point in civilizational development and global connection, people need exposure to the different cultures that intersect, or seemingly don't, their own.
Great comment, Jay. Yes I think it’s about also this meeting among the various local cultures in literature. How they interact gives us even more meaning and let’s us find commonalities as well. Thanks for joining the discussion.
"However, there is the unspoken soul of writing that seems to connect us." This holds esp. true the more pre/text is shared between readers/writers, which brings me to intertextuality and in consequence prototype semantics and the ongoing debate around classification and meaning. As for local fiction, if we're talking hometown, I am drawing a blank, although, Bavaria has some fine writers. Michael Ende is one and in earlier periods, I would name Brecht and Mann, both are/were taught in schools, at least in my case, probably still today, but most of my pre-university reading was filled with SF/F/Horror writers from the UK/US, so "home" for me was always fleeting, and still is.
I think it's important for education to break the DWEM literature canon and include "local" literature, read broadly! As far as my writing is concerned, my main influence comes from all the SF/F and Classics, from Adams to Zelazny.
PS. Noah Khan is great! Reminds me a lot of Richard Ashcroft (Human Condition esp.)
I can see that re Ashcroft!
Most of my pre-college choice reading was also decidedly non-local and often in strange worlds. But we looked at a lot of local in school, and then I was more interested in college and later to investigate myself.
Interesting your trajectory! I wonder as a non-native Parisian if you have embraced local literature there at all?
In any case, this idea of home as fleeting, yes I absolutely relate. Maybe this is why, paradoxically, I'm even more interested in localized writing and how it captures a space/culture. We can inhabit that artistic experience in some way.
Thanks for your wonderful comments as always, Alexander!
I came to France in 2004 without speaking a single word, well OK, I knew one or two, so any French literature up to that point was either in translation (German or English) and I only recently started to read in French, Camus, and to my surprise, War and Peace, which has a lot of French!
Some really interesting and thoughtful home connections. Love how this weaves ideas in your own mind.
Thanks for reading Jon!
Thank you for an interesting post, Kathleen. I like the idea of reading literature connected with places in order to make our visits all the more rewarding. It's the sort of 'home'work I enjoy! Prior to my career as a writer I spent over a decade as an interior design consultant working with domestic residential clients. 'Home' has, therefore, always been a pre-occupation, but specifically it's been about the physical spaces in which we live and how they impact our everyday life. Since I switched my focus to writing about home and place, my concept of home has broadened much further to include the emotional as well as the physical landscapes we inhabit.
Homework! Love it.
Yasmin, thanks for this very interesting reflection. I am incredibly interested with home interiors and their reflections of both the individual and the local culture. I didn't realize you worked in this area and know of at least three active community members here who have worked in interior design in some capacity. There is so much to be said about this topic but I love the way you talk about the emotional elements and physical landscapes as well. Thank you!